New towers coming to Transbay site?

Thanks to the real estate plunge, high-rise visions for San Francisco can seem so 2007. But this month the city’s Planning Department will release plans for what it calls the Transit Center District — the blocks around the Transbay Terminal where towers as tall as 1,000 feet might be allowed.

In May of 2008 an initial set of proposed heights and ground-level changes were released. While planners have crunched numbers since then, the recession has diverted attention and deflated momentum.

But planning director John Rahaim last week told a crowd at the Urban Land Institute that the full draft of the plan would be released in two weeks — or, he clarified later, at least by the end of November.

The rationale: letting a handful of towers rise past the current limits would make room for future jobs while raising funds from taxes and land sales to build a new terminal.

“The important of the plan is not only to build high densities around transit, but to have the high densities help pay for the transit center,” Rahaim said. “We’re beyond the point where we say ‘we no longer want high-rises in San Francisco’.”